and evening prayers. I join in your kind prayer that the Lord Jesus will make Himself manifest to me in no common measure, filling my soul with Himself."

His favourite text of Scripture was, "The Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost," and, along with this, he loved to refer to a quotation from Rutherford's Letters, "I want nothing now but a further revelation of the beauty of the unseen Son of God.'

In February, 1853, G. R. died, full of peace. The day before his death he intreated his wife to pray constantly, "O God, fill me with the Holy Ghost." "It is a short prayer," he said, "but it will bring a long answer, an eternal answer. Be constant in praying it, it is of no use if we do not pray constantly."

We may say, in the language of the venerable Rector of B-, in the preface of the work-" May every one who, like the writer of this short memoir, in weakness and in much fear, desires to win souls to Christ, take encouragement to trust in the strength of prayer, and in dependence on God the Holy Spirit, and use no weapon but the simple setting forth of His own record-that God hath given to us, sinners, eternal life, and this life in His Son."

And what will this poor Robin do?
For pinching days are near.

"How wonderfully since Shakespeare's time, have we lost the power of laughing at bad jests."— Ruskin.

"All great men not only know their business, but know that they know it; opinions, but they usually know that and are not only right in their main they are right in them; only they do not think much of themselves on that account. They have a curious under sense of powerlessness, feeling that the greatand that they could not do or be anything ness is not in them, but through them, but what God made them."-Ruskin

"We advance in simplicity and honesty as we advance in civilisation, and it is my belief that we become better bred and less artificial, and tell more truth every day."-Thackeray-Snob Papers.

"We should pay as much respect to worth as we do to age. I can't help crying out to persons of my own years, let your young people alone, don't be always meddling their affairs, which they can manage very well for themselves."" Thackeray.

""Tis the old story! ever the blind world knows not its angels of deliverance, till they stand glorified 'twixt heaven and earth."-Gerald Massey.

"Nothing that is broken is beautiful except the heart."-Persian Proverb.

"The history of the world is the biography of great men. No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness, than disbelief in great men. No great man lives in vain."-Hero Worship.

Sermon.

THE LORD'S SONG IN A STRANGE LAND.

By the Rev. WILLIAM SNODGRASS, late of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, now of St. Paul's, Montreal.

"How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land ?"-Psalm cxxxvii. 4.

In all the great lines of its deeper characteristics and more prominent features, human nature continues, throughout all time, the same; and this is sufficient to account for the existence of a great similarity in the lives and character of the men of ancient, and the men of modern days. When it is considered how closely the happiness and misery, the prosperity and decline of communities are linked, as by a chain of inseparable dependence, with the more temperate movements or wilder ebullitions of human nature, it is no cause for wonder, if, taking the form of historical events, the effects of this ever-active agent should, at different periods, exhibit so close a resemblance as to be almost the recurrence of the same events. In like manner, when a thorough and decided change ensues, by the lodgement of Christian principles in the heart, and when Christian experience and Christian conduct are the fruits of this happy transformation, no marvel, if between the devout contemporary of Job, and the reverend worshipper of the present day, there should exist a likeness of sentiment and a sameness of action. It is true, equally, of the new creature and the old, that the same enduring objects affect, somewhat similarly, the different minds by which they are contemplated, and the same unchangeable principles operate, to some extent alike, in the different hearts by which they are received. And so it happens, that however remotely they may exist, in point of time or place, subjected to similar trials, Christians realize corresponding hopes and fears-placed in analogous circumstances, they exhibit a corresponding behaviour. Thus the writer of this beautiful but plaintive psalm describes the situation of God's ancient peo1.-VIIL

| ple, as they sat dejected by the rivers of Babylon, far away from that rich and pleasant country which God had taught them to call their own, and separated, for many years, and by many miles, from that sacred temple to which they had been accustomed to repair, and deprived of those religious services which, in better days, they now felt they might have better enjoyed. He gives us a touching account of the cruel mockery and malig nant contempt which they were compelled to endure, in silent sorrow, at the instance of their captors. And, representing the whole exiled nation, he gives expression to the sentiments of surviving attachment to Zion, and undying remembrance of Jerusalem, which, in these adverse circumstances, cheered and upheld their spirits. In these particulars the Christian may have little difficulty in discovering a singular accordance with his present condition and his oft-times realized experience-for he, too, is in a state of exile from his proper home-a sojourner in a land of strangers, who bear him no sympathy; if, indeed, they do not treat him with hostility and disdain; and yet, he meets the scoffer with a silence which will not reveal itself to hatred and injustice, while he pledges, with sacramental solemnity, his love to Zion, and his allegiance to his Saviour God. And though we may not conceive the writer to be describing scenery, and detailing incidents to which a remote and secondary meaning is intentionally imparted, or hope to find in every circumstance, and in every word, the exact counterpart of something in our situation and experience as Christians-though we may not regard the Jewish captivity as designedly a type of the Christian's unavoidable sojourn in a

L

land which Satan claims, and his emis- selves houses, and reclaimed from the saries fill, or look upon the insulting forest's sway fields which they could conduct of the Babylonish captors as an call their own. And thus it may have emblem expressly constructed to set been with them, that, buoyed with overforth the Christian's endurance of the sanguine expectations, they were insenridicule and contempt of the ungodly sible for a time to the value of the priviworldling, or expect to find, in the deso- leges they once enjoyed, and the mighty lated country and polluted temple from loss which, in consequence of their which the Jews were dragged into a separation from fatherland, they now dreary and distant banishment, the sustained. But soon, we think,-variously studied imagery of that which the Chris- and often as memory recalled the happy tian prefers above his chiefest joy-yet, homesteads and the unrivalled scenery, in the situation described, and the trials the ancient customs and ancestral glory, endured, and the objects so fondly re- the moral greatness and the venerable membered, we do meet with things Church of the Scottish nation, and suggestive of the position which we oc- revived, in connection therewith, the cupy as home-sick pilgrims, of the sor- most dear and sacred associations—a rows created by opposing and contemptu- feeling of banishment, privation, and ous levity, and of that new Jerusalem, sorrow must have ensued. And ever as invisible but loved, unbuilt by hands and they missed the unbroken stillness with unassailable by principality or power; which the Scottish Sabbath was wont to and, amid the impressions and sentiments dawn upon their native glens and mounthus excited, we can find our attachment tains, and thought of the sweet counsel to Zion increased, and our piety to God and pleasant pilgrimage they were accusrekindled. tomed to enjoy with beloved friends as they went to the house of God, and discoursed of that ancient parish church, which they frequented, with its homely arrangements and simple ritual, the faithful sermons they had heard and the sacramental seasons they had witnessed there; and reverted, too, as we may well suppose, to that surrounding enclosure with its heap of graves and rudelysculptured monuments, where for centuries the ashes of their forefathers had been laid and where they themselves may have assisted in depositing the remains of a venerated parent, a respected brother, or affectionate sister-surely our natural and religious feelings might well excuse them if they wept as they remembered their country's Zion; and if, with no church to which they could repair, and no minister to whom they could listen, and no congregational psalmody in which they could join, they inquired one at another, "How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" And surely we may believe that many of them, by the very toils and hardships of their voluntary exile, learned to appropriate, in no sectarian or restricted sense, but with true Christian piety and

It must be allowed there are times in the lives of individuals and the history of nations when this poetical account of the separation of the Jewish people from all that they loved most dearly and valued most highly will be read with deeper interest, and be fraught with a richer significance, because of the closer resemblance between the incidents referred to, and the circumstances in which the reader is placed-and though we are fain to trust that the worst is now over, there may still be some among us or around us whose situation and experience can supply a fitting illustration. Again and again, in years gone by, have our countrymen, under the pressure of an overgrown population, and influenced by the prospect of otherwise and more speedily amassing wealth, as well as by the allurements with which curiosity, somehow or other, invests a country that is new, come forth from their native land in periodical streams and settled in the green dense woods and along the once inhospitable shores of North America. With all the ardour and activity which so great a novelty and change inspired, they felled the giant trees, built them

closures of the judgment-day the fact, which will then appear too late, that heaven is man's proper home, and the

be driven to make, that they have mistaken the place of banishment and privation for the place of rest and satisfaction.

But what are the sentiments which it is the privilege of the Christian to cherish in this land of exile, and which he confidently regards as the earnest of his com

It would have been profanation, as it was unlawful, for the Jews to sing the songs of the Lord anywhere out of Zion, and to have tuned their harps but in the temple service. At a later period the Samaritan contended for Mount Gerizim, and the Jew upheld Jerusalem, as the

hour, foretold by the Messiah, has long since come, when neither place nor form

others. By a sweeping majority, and with irrepressible unanimity, men live and act as if they were never to die. It is obvious that all their enjoyment is in acknowledgment which they will then the fashion of the world, which, they will not learn, is passing away,-that all their activities are concentrated in the management and enlargement of their business, which, they will not be convinced, they must soon resign to other hands, that all their affections are set upon earthly treasure, which, they have not the eye to see, rusts with the keeping return and restoration? ing, and perishes with the using. Youth is spent in dreams of ambition, and manhood disappears in the attempt to realize them; and age, with its premonitory symptoms, steals on apace, and yet you cannot rouse them from their stolid indifference to the reality of their case, nor move them from the attitude of unrea-place where men ought to worship. The sonable defiance. The grass may wither, and the flowers may fade, but the lesson which nature teaches is unheeded. The is a condition of acceptable service. The most stirring appeals may be addressed to them, but the agency of the pulpit and the church is resisted. They may be implored with the accents of affection and tenderness, but the words of the preacher are "unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice," for they hear, but will not act. While death is removing kings from the throne, and senators from the footstool, and judges from the bench, it is their chief concern and highest aim, to earn some proud distinction among men, by wisdom or wealth, in statesmanship or war. Though their dwellings have been invaded, and the place which has lost its occupant, or the dress which has now no wearer, or the toy which is left without an owner, reminds them that the spoiler has been there, and may soon revisit the circle he has broken, they feel secure as in a fortress which cannot be taken, or a house which is proof against the depredations of the midnight thief. Thus one generation imitates the folly and extravagance of another, and individuals are hardened by the daring example of their As, then, the Christian sings the Lord's neighbours. While the Christian alone song in this strange land, he cherishes a is taught that all is vanity and vexation sentiment of decided preference for the of spirit, the multitude leave to the dis-object in which he supremely joys-the

one common creed, upon which the devotions of all true worshippers must rest, is this, "God is a Spirit ;" and the sole and exclusive condition upon which their homage is truly rendered and graciously accepted is this, "They that worship Him, must worship Him in spirit and in truth." While, therefore, the interrogatory form of the text-stronger than any positive assertion—was in the mouth of the Jew, as he sat by the rivers of Babylon, a declaration of that which was unlawful and impossible, in the mouth of the Christian it may be regarded as an inquiry into the most fitting and appropriate sentiments which should fill his heart, when his lips send forth the song of praise and adoration-"How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?" And, I conceive, the conditional statements which precede the imprecations in the following verses supply us with these-"If I forget thee, O Jerusalem :" "if I do not remember thee;"-" if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy."